Toronto EMS Automated Dispatcher?

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vabiro

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Hi all,

I have noticed some traffic on the "Staging C" TG (26800) with an automated dispatcher announcing calls.

Is this the shape of things to come? Are human dispatchers a thing of the past, or will their responsibilities be modified?

In any case, this is an interesting development in Emergency Services Dispatching.

Cheers
Victor
 

vabiro

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They still encourage people to apply, although there are no current openings;

Toronto Job: Emergency Medical Dispatcher - File #EMD

I suppose I was being a bit facious about the "death" of the dispatcher role. After all, dispatching the calls is actually a pretty small part of the traffic that is on the EMS channels.

The traffic was the usual dispatch info:

"Delta Call, 123 Main Street, Cross of Danforth Ave., 47 year old male with chest pains"

That info isn't going to replace a dispatcher, but it would be one less thing that they would need to do while attending to other traffic.

Victor
 

yorkphotog

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Did you only hear them testing it the one time?

I'd love to hear that.. might set a scanner to record that TG in case there is any more action!
 

vabiro

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Did you only hear them testing it the one time?

I'd love to hear that.. might set a scanner to record that TG in case there is any more action!

I turned on the scanner at around 8:30 this morning and have heard it on and off all morning. It is difficult to know how frequent it is being done because of the other traffic I am listening to.

I have hear rapid, consecutive dispatches of 5 or 6 "calls", so it would be worth putting on the recorder. You probably wouldn't have to wait too long to get a sample.

As an aside, the thing that caught my attention was the pronunciation of the street Spadina. The "dispatcher" was saying "Spadeena Avanue", pronouncing the i as a long e in Spadina and the e in Avenue as a. Not something you hear at all from a Toronto native, but something an American or other non-resident may do.

Victor
 

pathalogical

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I noticed Staging C yesterday afternoon around 5:30pm. It sounded like an open mic which is what caused me to look at the display. I could hear real people in background chit chating a few seconds but not directly into the mic. No automated voice....but I guess robots aren't gonna be shootin' the sh---......uh, breeze ! Victor's post above reminds me of a program I had on my Commodore 64, you type in the words and it would say them. But you had to spell them differently for proper pronounciation, Spa-die-nah Av-ehn-knew or toy-let. lol
 

smnjhull

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No idea what system TEMS is messing around with but here is an article about the problems with an automated system Texas that is causing delays in dispatch.

{IMHO TEMS will "buy" into this system 100%. Then in a year when problems arise, spend another $100K on a consultant to tell them the system is crap. Pay a programmer (who will probably have zero dispatch experience) more $$$ to "fix it" and then end up abandoning the entire thing a few years later!}
 

yorkphotog

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No idea what system TEMS is messing around with but here is an article about the problems with an automated system Texas that is causing delays in dispatch.

{IMHO TEMS will "buy" into this system 100%. Then in a year when problems arise, spend another $100K on a consultant to tell them the system is crap. Pay a programmer (who will probably have zero dispatch experience) more $$$ to "fix it" and then end up abandoning the entire thing a few years later!}


Sorry, where's the link?
 

KE7JFF

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Seattle Fire has a robot voice doing the dispatch actually. its pretty slick. However, they have a human there to override it if needed.
 

EJB

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London Fire is supposed to be switching to the CADVoice platform when they move over to the EDACS system. I heard it in action a year ago when I was in Florida... Ft Lauderdale and West Palm Beach both use it. I posted some crappy videos of it in action:

YouTube - DIGI0001.AVI
YouTube - DIGI0003.AVI

It sounds like one of the voices I hear on the US NOAA weather radio.

I suppose that if TEMS goes this route we will not ever hear units to Code 8 at Dany and Dany.
Damm automation
 

smnjhull

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No idea what system TEMS is messing around with but here is an article about the problems with an automated system Texas that is causing delays in dispatch.

{IMHO TEMS will "buy" into this system 100%. Then in a year when problems arise, spend another $100K on a consultant to tell them the system is crap. Pay a programmer (who will probably have zero dispatch experience) more $$$ to "fix it" and then end up abandoning the entire thing a few years later!}

Sorry. Here's the "missing link".

Faster alerts for EMS frustrates Fire Department
 

vabiro

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London Fire is supposed to be switching to the CADVoice platform when they move over to the EDACS system. I heard it in action a year ago when I was in Florida... Ft Lauderdale and West Palm Beach both use it. I posted some crappy videos of it in action:

YouTube - DIGI0001.AVI
YouTube - DIGI0003.AVI

That sounds just like the platform being used by TEMS.

There is a very big upside to their use of this system: Because the dispatch begins with a double beep (BTW, did I mention that?) and the speech and terminology is so consistent, you could use a voice to text software to create web pages (like the TFD CAD) paging alerts and other very cool stuff.

Victor
 

vabiro

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I've still not heard a thing on any talkgroup about this... perhaps it was just testing you heard??

Without a doubt it was only testing!

It was only on TG 26800 which is listed as "Staging C". This would be the first traffic I can recall hearing on this TG.

The testing sounded like developer or calibration testing, not Alpha or Beta testing in the actual dispatching of calls on NW, NE, SE or SW. Sounds way too early for that.

There would be repeats of the same or a group of calls continuously for a minute or more. They sounded like genuine calls and the Voice CAD system may have been fed the data from the CAD system.

Victor
 

hfxChris

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As an aside, the thing that caught my attention was the pronunciation of the street Spadina. The "dispatcher" was saying "Spadeena Avanue", pronouncing the i as a long e in Spadina and the e in Avenue as a. Not something you hear at all from a Toronto native, but something an American or other non-resident may do.
A lot of that stuff would be ironed out later before it goes live. Any text-to-speech voice synthesis software is going to mispronounce names like that. Environment Canada's AVIPaDS voice system is the same way, it's setup so that certain names or words are pronounced a certain way to make it sound "right" over the air.
 

Jay911

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I've had some conversations with a user of the Locution system, which is what Edmonton's using (there is a sample in the forums if you search for 'Edmonton automated dispatch'). CADVoice is, according to Locution's website, the name of the product (Locution being the name of the company).

Locution uses a real human who has recorded all the street names/types in your district along with numerics, call types, and other necessary words. The rumor is that they actually have to have a "casting call" of sorts when they hire people to speak the info into the recording, because if your city expands 2 years down the road, you're going to want the voice on the new streets to sound the same as the older streets... :)
 

KE7JFF

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I've had some conversations with a user of the Locution system, which is what Edmonton's using (there is a sample in the forums if you search for 'Edmonton automated dispatch'). CADVoice is, according to Locution's website, the name of the product (Locution being the name of the company).

Locution uses a real human who has recorded all the street names/types in your district along with numerics, call types, and other necessary words. The rumor is that they actually have to have a "casting call" of sorts when they hire people to speak the info into the recording, because if your city expands 2 years down the road, you're going to want the voice on the new streets to sound the same as the older streets... :)

The Seattle one I think uses Locution as well and I have to say, it sounds slick. Because of the voice recording deal, the pronunciation is dead on.
 
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